Rating: 
Summary: I have been cooking with it for more than 20 years.I love it
Review: Very simple and delicious recipes. It is the best cooking book, for practical and non sofisticated people that knows international food and enjoy taste, simplicity and time saving.
Rating:
Summary: A must if you love "home- cookin'".
Review: I am buying my second copy of this book because I, literally, wore my first copy out! Many homestyle favorites included, as well as the basics of cooking - ie: boiling eggs. An essential for your cookbook collection.
Rating: 
Summary: Great for baking, but entrees bland by current standards
Review: As would explain the disparate ratings here, I'd like to point out that the book dates from the late 19th Century. Despite updating, most of the entrees are of the bland, old WASP variety. In general, they are not spicy enough for cosmopolitan people used to ethnic foods. That said, it's a great resource for deserts/baked goods.
Rating:
Summary: Only Cookbook You Need
Review: I love this cookbook. It has everything I need. I use it for basics and for fancy cakes. You could own only this cookbook and do fine for the rest of your life.
Rating: 
Summary: At best bland food.
Review: I am a 18 year old college student and novice cook. I was excited about this cookbook because of its reputation and comprehensiveness. But after trying 5 recipes that all stinked I found myself sorely disappointed and questioning my ability to cook. The family-favorite deemed recipe for Fish with Polenta and Spinach was horrible and gave my house a foul odor for 2 days. Fortunately, I tried other cookbooks and had more success. My boyfriend's mother received a copy of Fannie Farmer twenty years ago as a young bride and she did not have any success with it either. My recommendation of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook: stay away.
Rating:
Summary: A cookbook for families
Review: This cookbook is loaded with things that your kids will eat and that you will enjoy yourself. It's recipes make sense, are tasty but don't require a special trip to the chi-chi store. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent resource
Review: I pull out this cookbook time and time again, relying on it for basic techniques, classic recipes, and simple preparations for the fresh vegetables I get from the local farmer's market. I am rarely disappointed when I am looking for a specific recipe or ideas for something to do with one or two ingredients. It's not flashy or gimmicky but a solid companion in my cookbook library.
Rating:
Summary: Fannie Farmer: the staff of life!
Review: My wife is a gourmet cook, so you may think that I don't spend
much time in the kitchen. Well, you'd be right, but that time I do spend is usually preceded by a trip to the cupboard
to retrieve a ratty, dog-eared, broken-into-two-parts softcover
version of the Boston School of Cooking Fannie Farmer Cookbook.
My parents gave it to me when I moved out, twenty years ago. There's no better reference to find our how long to bake a potato, or how to make lobster thermidor. When my wife
encounters a problem in one of her more complex recipes,
I have often pulled out my Fannie Farmer and found the solution.
I was delighted to find, in a consignment store, a 1934 hardbound copy of my favorite cookbook. Some of the recipes
haven't changed. This copy had advertisements at the back
that were as interesting as the recipes.
Now it looks like I'll be moving up sixty-three years for the anniversary copy. I shouldn't need another for about twenty years...
Rating:
Summary: Super All-Purpose Cookbook
Review: Though I see there have been some negative reviews that this, latest edition of the "Fannie Farmer Cookbook," is not as "good" as the original, I have to say that the "original," published in the late nineteenth century as the "Boston Cooking School" cookbook, would hardly be especially useful today (recipes for squirrel anyone?). Fannie Farmer is synonymous with good, old-fashioned practical cooking--no nouvelle cuisine here--and the updated version simply keeps with the times, adding new techniques which take into account modern equipment and food mores (things like fat, cholesterol and sodium are taken into consider, but this isn't a diet cookbook).All in all, the "Fanny Farmer Cookbook" is a super all-purpose cookbook, offering well-tested, simple recipes for just about any food you can think of. Alongside the classic "Betty Crocker Cookbook," the "Joy of Cooking" and something new from Martha Stewart (I like the "Martha Stewart Living Cookbook," which is a compilation of recipes from her magazine) and/or Cook's Illustrated (either "The Best Recipe" or the "Cook's Bible"), "The Fanny Farmer Cookbook" will create a perfectly balanced recipe collection for the experienced cook or novice baker. On a final note, I'd recommend the hardcover edition, as the softcover model I saw in a bookstore was not very sturdy. Cookbooks get a lot of use and abuse, so I'd recommend spending a bit extra to get a the hardcover edition.
Rating:
Summary: Nostalgia Can Be Deadly or A Compendium of Discomfort Food
Review: I, like everyone else who reviewed this book, can remember when they first pried open a Fannie Farmer Cookbook. I was ten years old and remember reading about how the book said how important it was to follow directions. Eighteen years later and I still follow directions, but these are the wrong ones. This weekend I've been rather busy cooking two dishes that I wanted to get out of the way: lasagna and cheesecake. Now, I'm a casual cook and have gotten shockingly positive responses for my efforts. Not this time. What I ended up with was WASP lasagna and sweet-as-a-tootache cheesecake. THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS LATER and two failed recipes: the recipe for lasagna says to add A QUARTER OF A POUND OF PARMESAN (hellishly salty) on top to finish off the layers. This is unheard of by everyone I know even though no one is Italian. Every time I bit into a morsel of this food my tastebuds overloaded. The cheesecake says to put a quarter of a cup of sugar in the crust which makes it sickeningly sweet and instead of cooking it at 350 (11 other recipes say 350), it says 325. Guess what? The result is mushy, too fine, too light while the crust blasts your mouth with too much sweet. What worries me is that someone who has NO previous experience cooking will pick this up and think they're on solid ground. If you're a new bride, a gay guy cooking for that special someone, a metrosexual cooking for that special gal, or a cook of any caliber, these recipes will SICKEN those you inflict them on and dash your hopes of being labelled competent. Good luck if you have a weekend of hosting and somehow think to base ALL the food on these recipes. Your guests will have mood swings, fights will ensue, marriages will break up, and relationships will be put under an unbearable strain. People will become walking pinball machines. This all comes from TOO salty (INSANELY salty) & TOO sweet. I don't know who could handle this food over a prolonged period of time and if you cook for others, good luck trying to save your reputation as a host and amatuer chef or even as a likable person (who could handle such a bombing of the tastebuds and still like or trust you?). Before I decided to wander back down memory lane I read some of the reviews. There was only one negative one I remember that mentioned the brownie recipe. Well, my sister took the original Fannie Farmer from the house I grew up in and I got the recipe from her. That is the only one that worked. I've never found a brownie recipe that worked and now I have it, but it's completely unavailable in this book because it's "new and improved." In closing, I will NEVER use another recipe from this book. In addition to making me wince when I eat the salty/sweet it would give me mood swings and probably prompt someone I fed this stuff to to take a swing at me. Please, I exhort you, if you want to make a good impression cooking get other recipes and pick and choose from other books and friends. That's how I got my best stuff. You've been warned.
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